Tell the G8: Farming Can Lift the World's Poor Out of Poverty

Millions of people are locked in a vicious cycle of hunger and poverty. Poverty means parents can’t feed their families enough nutritious food, leaving children malnourished. Malnutrition leads to irreversibly stunted development and shorter, less productive lives. Less productive lives mean no escape from poverty.

We have to break this cycle.

ONE is launching Thrive: Food. Farming. Future. It’s an ambitious campaign that will run until 2015. Thrive calls on each of us to play our part to break the cycle of hunger and poverty, tackling their root causes. If we achieve our goals by 2015, we could see 15 million fewer children chronically malnourished and 50 million people lifted out of extreme poverty.

We're calling on African leaders, donor governments and the private sector to focus on thirty of the poorest countries that have smart agriculture and nutrition plans. Those plans are tested, costed and affordable. They need to be put into practice. For that they need two things: political leadership and financial backing.

But we know leaders won’t act unless lots of people urge them to do so.

Most people would do anything they could to help one hungry child. Together, we can stop malnutrition, not just for one child but for 15 million. We can end poverty, not just for one person but for 50 million. Together we can break the cycle.

It’s time to break the vicious cycle of hunger and poverty. Please urgently agree to and implement a bold global plan to ensure 50 million people escape poverty through agriculture and 15 million children no longer endure chronic malnutrition.